


Nude Modeling

by shir_oh_no



Series: Shance Art AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Art School, Fluff, M/M, Nude Modeling, Painter Shiro, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but its not gonna be in depth in this work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 16:12:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10857507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shir_oh_no/pseuds/shir_oh_no
Summary: This is going to be a multiple-part Shance art school AU, and this is the story of how they meet. Constructive criticism would be awesome, as this is my first time writing something more than just a one-shot. I hope you enjoy!Note: I'm not an art student and this is entirely based on that one drawing class I had freshman year so sorry if anything is too off-base!edit:waffle-walkson tumblr madethis incredible artfor this fic





	Nude Modeling

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a multiple-part Shance art school AU, and this is the story of how they meet. Constructive criticism would be awesome, as this is my first time writing something more than just a one-shot. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Note: I'm not an art student and this is entirely based on that one drawing class I had freshman year so sorry if anything is too off-base!
> 
> edit: [waffle-walks](https://waffle-walks.tumblr.com/) on tumblr made [this incredible art](https://shir-oh-no.tumblr.com/post/161146358962/waffle-walks-a-thing-from-shir-oh-nos-art-au) for this fic

_Nude modeling_. Shiro knew this was going to take up an entire unit of his painting class, but he was hoping that it just wouldn’t ever really happen. Sure, it was the only way to practice painting figures, but no doubt the model was probably going to be some old man, and no one really wants to practice on a figure with too many lines already existing.

Shiro made a face at his easel, focusing on setting up a fresh piece of painting paper on a clipboard and arranging his paints on a chair he pulled close. He stuck his tongue out in annoyance while rifling through his paintbrushes, trying to find the perfect one to start with. Ugh, was it too late to leave class already?

Don’t get him wrong, Shiro _loved_ painting. He loved mixing base red and base blue to create an endless number of purple shades. He loved the range in textures that could be made, depending on the amount of paint being used. He loved seeing something in his head be able to be transferred onto paper. He just didn’t love painting humans.

Shiro sighed. When he was eighteen, he wanted to join the army. It was all he had ever wanted to do. He wanted to go to other places and help the people who lived there. His dad had been in the Navy, and his grandfather before that had been a Marine, and Shiro had desperately wanted to live up the legacy laid before him. He excelled in boot camp, rising to the top of his class, and was quickly assigned to a unit, and by the time he was twenty-one, he was in Syria, keeping his head down and following orders. He was good at it; he was helping people and serving his country. Sure there were a few firefights, but nothing too bad. He had nearly finished his first year-long tour when one of the men in his unit stepped on a landmine. He was sent home a month early, down a right arm, covered with scars, and haunted with nightmares of his friends dying in front of him.

After weeks in the hospital and another two months in a rehab facility, he went home, moving into his childhood best friend’s apartment. Matt was great, giving up his couch to him until he was able to get back on his feet. In return, Shiro offered himself up as a guinea pig to Matt’s graduate project: prosthetics hooked up to the nervous system.

One of the ways he had learned motor skills was through painting. The thick handle of a paintbrush and large sweeping motions that came with the drag of the brush against the canvas helped him learn the motions of the arm, and in a matter of months he was able to write his full name in small print in the corner of his first complete painting: a sunflower garden with a sea of bright yellow and green. It wasn’t beautiful, really it was just vague flower shapes on top of green stalks and a childish sun in the corner, but it was something he had made with an inorganic hand. It was something completely his. The next day, he had enrolled in a few art classes at the local community college. Now, two years later, he was twenty-five years old in his third semester as a full-time college student, and he was loving it.

Except for now. He really was not ready to paint human figures. His flowers were now hyper-realistic, and had mastered the art of perspective. He could paint animals and still-lifes and nearly anything else, but couldn’t even bring himself to paint a self-portrait.

Shiro paused; maybe it wasn’t too late to tell the professor he couldn’t do this. Coran would understand, probably. Shiro saw a flash of bright orange walking into the studio and turned, ready to make his excuses to the professor and leave, but saw he was talking to an unfamiliar man. A really pretty unfamiliar man. _Oh shit_.

This man was all legs and soft-looking tan skin. His smile was bright against the warm tones. Even from his position on the other side of the room, Shiro could see that the bright blue of his eyes matched the sleeves of his baseball tee almost perfectly. His jeans were loose on his hips, revealing a slight V-shape pointing down and _god_ Shiro wanted to trace those lines with his paintbrush. Or his tongue. Either one worked. Both would be preferable. The man’s head moved, his eyes meeting Shiro’s stare, and even his _nose_ was cute, small and sharp, upturned slightly at the end. The man tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at him, a smirk pulling up the corner of his mouth. If this was the model, Shiro was _fucked_.

“This is Lance,” Coran’s voice broke Shiro’s focus on the beautiful boy. “He’s going to be our male model for the unit. We will have a female model on Thursdays, so be prepared for that. Today, Lance will pose for an hour, during which you will try to paint what you see. You may use whatever colors you would like, as long as you stay true to the form. No variations. You are here to learn the skills that come with human anatomy, so no cubism.” Coran glared at a group of students to the right of Shiro. “Lance, go ahead and step onto the stage, if you please?”

“Sure thing, Coran.” The man- _Lance_ \- stripped off his shirt then and there. He dropped it onto the floor by the raised platform and flashed a wink in Shiro’s direction. Shiro blushed and watched Lance tug at his jeans, watching them join the shirt on the floor, revealing what felt like miles of leg and, _Jesus Christ,_ he hadn’t been wearing underwear. That V wasn’t the only thing Shiro wanted to lick. Lance stepped onto the platform and stood angled towards the corner of the room Shiro was in, his feet shoulder width apart, left leg back, right perpendicular to it, his torso to the side and shoulders back, his face relaxed and fixed on a point far above Shiro’s head. _Right_. He was here as a model, not as something to just fuel Shiro’s fantasies for the next year.

Shiro shook his head and picked up his paintbrush, zeroing in on the blank paper in front of him. He could do this. He could see the beautiful figure in front of him as nothing but an object, no sexier than the array of pots they painted last week. He just had to focus. He could totally do this.

* * *

_He couldn’t do this_. It was so difficult to mix the correct shade of Lance’s skin, and he couldn’t even get close! And when he gave up and tried to paint with a tone of too-dark brown that was too cold to match Lance’s warmth, he got distracted by the legs, and the arms, and the everything else on Lance’s body. The hour was nearly up, and all Shiro had to show for it was an ugly outline of Lance’s body proportions.

“Five more minutes!” Coran called out, “Lance, how are you doing?”

“I could do with a break here in the next five minutes,” Lance joked, flashing a smile to the professor for a heartbeat before regaining his composure.

Shiro huffed in frustration, plopping his dirty paintbrush into his water mug. He sat down for the first time all class and hid behind his canvas, covering his face with his hands in embarrassment. Five minutes passed in the blink of an eye, and Coran announced a fifteen-minute break. Shiro couldn’t find the courage to leave his hiding spot anytime soon.

“Hey,” a hesitant voice spoke from the other side of the canvas. Shiro uncovered his eyes and peeked around the edge of his painting.

Lance had a robe now, the color a pastel pink, going beautifully with Lance’s eye color. He had a curious grin formed with his lips, his eyebrows drawn together slightly. Shiro felt heat rising to is cheeks. He did _not_ want this gorgeous man to see the ugliness he had created.

“Hi,” he mumbled his reply, using all his energy to avoid hiding back behind the easel.

“May I see?” Lance asked, gesturing to the easel. Shiro shrugged.

Lance walked around to stand beside Shiro, setting his gaze on the painting. Shiro heard a huff of laughter. Lance was laughing! At his work! Shiro felt his heart sinking, but at the same time, felt a jolt of white-hot anger

“Listen, I know it’s not good, but you don’t have to be a dick about it,” Shiro clenched his teeth, setting his jaw and glaring at the model, “This is my first time drawing a figure so you don’t get to laugh.”

Shiro’s glare didn’t affect him at all. Lance’s smile grew, and his laughs were raising in volume. “No, it’s not that,” Lance rested his hand on Shiro’s shoulder, “it’s just you looked so miserable that entire hour I was expecting a stick figure!”

Shiro blinked, his anger dissipating, unsure of how to respond.

“Are you laughing at my favorite student?” Coran strode across the room to join them. He had little flecks of green paint in his mustache, contrasting beautifully with the fiery orange Shiro was skeptical was natural.

“No? Well, yes, kinda?” Lance smiled at the orange-haired man. “This guy spent the last hour looking like he was on the verge of tears but what he created isn’t half bad at all.”

Shiro blushed, his face hot. He stared at the figure in front of him and talked to both of them. “I was having trouble getting the right shade and I couldn’t figure out where to start and it was frustrating, okay?”

Coran hummed, “You only have an hour; don’t worry so much about the color. You can use only hot pink if you want, I just want you to focus on the anatomy and basic shading. Relax Shiro; it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Lance, “and for what it’s worth, I think it looks great! I’d let you paint me any day.” Shiro snapped his gaze to Lance’s just in time to see the other boy wink at him. Shiro felt tension he didn’t even know he had release. “Coran, do I have time to run to the bathroom really quick before the next pose?”

“Of course, Lance,” Coran beamed, “Take your time.”

Lance strode out of the room, his robe catching the air and fluttering elegantly behind him. Shiro watched those long legs carry the bubbly boy out of the room. _I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave._ Shiro sighed, a small smile on his face.

Coran caught his eye and winked before turning around and heading back to his own easel. Shiro swapped out papers, putting up a clean sheet before rinsing and drying off his paintbrush. With a new plan of action prepared, Shiro grabbed the tube of his favorite shade of purple paint and stood up to try again. 

Lance waltzed back into the room, the doors to the studio closing behind him. In a single motion, he slipped off his robe, hung it up next to the platform, and stepped onto said platform. This time, he posed standing straight ahead, his left hand on his hip, his right hanging at his side, and his shin up and fixed on a spot in front of him.

Shiro dipped his paint in the lilac paint and brought it to the canvas, ready to begin again.

* * *

The weeks passed and Shiro could see his improvement. Though always in vivid color, Lance and the female model, Allura, were growing more detailed as time went on. Shiro had figured out how to add in more colors for variety, and soon enough had a small army of rainbow figures by his side, but he still yearned to get paint Lance in all his real colors. He got his chance to do so after the fourth week of figure painting, at the end of class, when Coran had announced the final project.

“Paint anything. It can be a still life, a landscape, or a figure, but it must be realistic. It is due in two weeks, so take your time and really try to get it detailed!”

Lance was pulling on his shirt as Shiro approached him. Lance smiled at him, though he looked confused.

“Can I paint you?” Shiro blurted. Shit. He had meant to ask a little calmer than that had come out, so he rushed to explain. “You don’t have to say yes but you have the most beautiful skin and I’ve been working to try to get the right shade and I would love it if you would be the subject of my final project.”

Throughout Shiro’s mini-speech, Lance’s smile had grown. His eyes sparked with excitement, and Shiro could practically see the man _vibrating_ with enthusiasm. “Yes!”

Shiro smiled, pulling out his phone. “Can I have your number? We can meet up when you’re free.”

Lance took his phone, typing in his number. “Hang on, gotta take a selfie for the icon.” He pulled Shiro in and stuck his tongue out at the screen and took a quick selfie, catching Shiro mid-laugh.

“Thank you so much,” Shiro said, “This really means a lot.”

“No problem! Like I said, you can paint me anytime. And for the record, I don’t just mean on a canvas.” Lance winked, already heading towards the door, leaving Shiro left behind smiling to clean up his area. Oh man. Figure drawing was awesome.

**Author's Note:**

> anyways you can find me on tumblr at [shir-oh-no](https://shir-oh-no.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
